He answered by letting his arms drop at his sides, as if regretting the poverty of the offering he should thus make to God and the king.
“What will become of me?” exclaimed the young girl, sorrowfully.
Marche-a-Terre looked at her stupidly; his eyes seemed to enlarge; tears rolled down his hairy cheeks upon the goatskin which covered him, and a low moan came from his breast.
“Saint Anne of Auray!--Pierre, is this all you have to say to me after a parting of seven years? You have changed indeed.”
“I love you the same as ever,” said the Chouan, in a gruff voice.
“No,” she whispered, “the king is first.”
“If you look at me like that I shall go,” he said.
He seized her hand, wrung it, kissed it, made the sign of the cross, and rushed into the stable, like a dog who fears that his bone will be taken from him.
“Pille-Miche,” he said to his comrade. “Where’s your tobacco-box?”
“Ho! _sacre bleu_! what a fine chain!” cried Pille-Miche, fumbling in a pocket constructed in his goatskin.
Then he held out to Marche-a-Terre the little horn in which Bretons put the finely powdered tobacco which they prepare themselves during the long winter nights. The Chouan raised his thumb and made a hollow in the palm of his hand, after the manner in which an “Invalide” takes his tobacco; then he shook the horn, the small end of which Pille-Miche had unscrewed. A fine powder fell slowly from the little hole pierced in the point of this Breton utensil. Marche-a-Terre went through the same process seven or eight times silently, as if the powder had power to change the current of his thoughts. Suddenly he flung the horn to Pille-Miche with a gesture of despair, and caught up a gun which was hidden in the straw.
“Seven or eight shakes at once! I suppose you think that costs nothing!” said the stingy Pille-Miche.
“Forward!” cried Marche-a-Terre in a hoarse voice. “There’s work before us.”
Thirty or more Chouans who were sleeping in the straw under the mangers, raised their heads, saw Marche-a-Terre on his feet, and disappeared instantly through a door which led to the garden, from which it was easy to reach the fields.
When Francine left the stable she found the mail-coach ready to start. Mademoiselle de Verneuil and her new fellow-travellers were already in it. The girl shuddered as she saw her young mistress sitting side by side with the woman who had just ordered her death. The young man had taken his seat facing Marie, and as soon as Francine was in hers the heavy vehicle started at a good pace.